JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
The biblical cinema has always been between devotion and blockbuster
between Puritans and devoted followers shocked. Jesus already attracted the
pioneers of cinema, as Lumiere and Méliès, and has continued to fascinate
producers, since the film emulates religious literature, music and the arts.
Lumière, the first "reporter", produced Life and Passion of
Jesus Christ, filmed in Horitz village of Bohemia, where the drama of Calvary,
represented by the people reproduced periodically during the days of Easter.
The film lasted just over a quarter of an hour.
In 1923 Robert Wiene filmed I.N.R.I. and in 1926 Cecil B. de Mille
filmed his King of Kings, as a blockbuster. In 1936 two films were made: La vie
de Jesus de Marcel Gibaud and Ecce Homo Walter Rilla.
Two films that became very famous worldwide were shot in Spain although
US production: The Mysteries of the Rosary (1957), Father Peyton, and King of
Kings (1961) by Nicholas Ray.
Ben-Hur, Fred Niblo and Ben Hur William Wyler, in Richard Fleischer
Barabbas and The Robe, Henry Koster, the figure of Christ or passion often have
a predominant role in the plot.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, made a film about the life of Jesus nearest to the
austerity of the gospel. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) is entirely
based on the text of Matthew and rolled camera in hand, in the best style of
"cinéma vérité". The atmosphere, between medieval, Byzantine and
Renaissance, is completely symbolic.
Jesus Christ Superstar, Norman Jewison, musical coming from Broodway. It
was made with recreational character and free interpretation of texts, places
and situations, but in countries of Christian religious repression became a
song of deliverance.
THE CHURCH FILM PRODUCER
In 1976, promoted by the Catholic Church premiered in Paris in a church,
the Messiah, the agnostic Rossellini. The film was very underrated as
neorealism of Rosellini takes you to treat Jesus without accentuating the
miraculous nor end.
"Jesus of Nazareth" (1977), Zeffirelli, Catholic. The
shooting, between Morocco and Tunisia .It was highly praised by the Italian
Catholic Church that urged his faithful, as he was rejected by American
Puritans, who accused Jesus for showing too human.
In this context the production of Mel Gibson, written by Gibson himself
and Benedict Fitzgerald, whose version is set in the last twelve hours of
Christ, highlighting their bloody scenes to accommodate the viewer's attention
by image torture falls. Draws attention to its denostación of women to present
it as representative of Satan on Earth, because in the film only Jesus, Judas
and the Virgin could see it, facing up to any challenge to have the alleged
support of the Vatican to declare the Pope John Paul II, his now famous
"So was" after receiving the principal actor James Caviezel.
"The Last Temptation of Christ" (1983), Scorsese made by a
director who tries to get away from the perfect vision of the figure of the
Messiah manages to introduce the viewer to the conflict of Jesus, a man
suffering. The film shocked the Catholic world, remaining censored many years
and so far, it has lifted its ban in some countries.
The Last Temptation of Christ, is a much more free time and also much
more rigorous from a Christian point of view, most of the classics of the genre
that emerged thanks to the heavy machinery industry of Hollywood.
Scorsese poses a modest almost intimate, story about industrial
dimensions of his proposal, which illustrates the humanity of the character
through a permanent doubt about his identity, unfinished at no time taking his
divine nature, to suggest the prospect of visionary past returns, and
successive temptations facing from an initiatory circle in the desert or the
surreal image of having her heart with his hands to offer it symbolically and
physically to others.
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